More specifically, the proposal being discussed in Warwick was a 30-inch natural gas transmission line from Lycoming County through Berks and into the vicinity of Eagle in Chester County.

In Chester County, township officials have said the proposed route would take the Commonwealth Pipeline through French Creek State Park, The Hopewell Big Woods, Ryerss Farm for Aged Equines and across at least four “exceptional value streams,” including two branches of French Creek.

The Dec. 11 massive Columbia Gas line explosion in West Virginia put the news of a coming pipeline on the radar of many area residents. More than 150 packed the Warwick meeting room.

An examination of the pipeline industry and its patchwork of regulators published last month by the non-profit investigative journalism site ProPublica makes it plain that understanding the issues involved is no easy task.

“Pipelines are generally regarded as a safe way to transport fuel, a far better alternative to tanker trucks or freight trains. The risks inherent in transporting fuel through pipelines are analogous to the risks inherent in traveling by airplane. Airplanes are safer than cars, which kill about 70 times as many people a year (highway accidents killed about 33,000 people in 2010, while aviation accidents killed 472). But when an airplane crashes, it is much more deadly than any single car accident, demands much more attention, and initiates large investigations to determine precisely what went wrong,” reporter Lena Groeger wrote in her Nov. 15 ProPublica report.

“The same holds true for pipelines. Based on fatality statistics from 2005 through 2009, oil pipelines are roughly 70 times as safe as trucks, which killed four times as many people during those years, despite transporting only a tiny fraction of fuel shipments. But when a pipeline does fail, the consequences can be catastrophic (though typically less so than airplane accidents), with the very deadliest accidents garnering media attention and sometimes leading to a federal investigation,” Groeger wrote.

According to ProPublica’s database of pipeline incidents, since 1986 Pennsylvania has seen 275 pipeline-related accidents, 204 of them gas-related, and causing 33 deaths, 137 injuries and $133 million in property damages.

Three of those incidents occurred in 2012, none of which caused any fatalities, but which did cause a combined $459,000 in property damage.

Of course the most catastrophic in recent memory was the explosion last February caused by the rupturing of an 83-year-old pipeline beneath an Allentown Street that killed five people, including a 4-month-old boy and an elderly couple. More than 50 homes and businesses were damaged and hundreds of residents were forced outside into 27-degree weather.

“Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission investigators said that the operator, UGI Utilities, failed to adequately monitor its lines and fix aging pipelines that showed signs of damage. A recent joint settlement proposal has UGI paying a $386,000 fine and accelerating the replacement of its cast-iron pipes,” ProPublica reported.

In addition to age, human error and technical problems, Mother Nature can also play a role in pipeline problems.

“This year Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the natural gas pipelines on New Jersey’s barrier islands. From Bay Head to Long Beach Island, falling trees, dislodged homes and flooding caused more than 1,600 pipeline leaks,” ProPublica reported. All leaks have been brought under control and no one was harmed, according to a New Jersey Natural Gas spokeswoman. But the company was forced to shut down service to the region, leaving 28,000 people without gas, and it may be months before they get it back.

Even those incidents will not result in any increased inspection regimen any time soon.

“While a slew of federal and state agencies oversee some aspect of America’s pipelines, the bulk of government monitoring and enforcement falls to a small agency within the Department of Transportation called the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration – pronounced ‘FIM-sa’ by insiders. The agency only requires that 7 percent of natural gas lines and 44 percent of all hazardous liquid lines be subject to their rigorous inspection criteria and be inspected regularly. The rest of the regulated pipelines are still inspected, according to a PHMSA official, but less often,” ProPublic reported.

“Critics say that PHMSA lacks the resources to adequately monitor the millions of miles of pipelines over which it does have authority. The agency has funding for only 137 inspectors, and often employs even less than that (in 2010 the agency had 110 inspectors on staff). A Congressional Research Service report found a ‘long-term pattern of understaffing’ in the agency’s pipeline safety program. According to the report, between 2001 and 2009, the agency reported a staffing shortfall of an average of 24 employees a year,” according to ProPublica.

Official agencies are doing little better when approving new pipelines, said the activists who spoke to the Warwick crowd.

Supervisors Chairman Charles Jacob said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the primary agency responsible for approving pipelines, has little interest in the concerns of local residents or governments.

“Their main goal is to make pipelines happen,” he said.

Jim Wendelgass, township manager in West Vincent, said FERC’s process will give residents, townships and organizers only 21 days to file the papers necessary to “intervene” in the Commonwealth application, and then only after it is formally submitted.

This is not the first time the region has grappled with the issues surrounding a controversial pipeline proposal.

In 2002, after five years of controversy, a Texas company pulled the plug on a proposed five-mile pipeline that would have carried landfill gas from the Potstown Landfill, through the borough to the former Occidental Chemical plant in Lower Pottsgrove.

Opposition to the proposal had been fierce, but the pipeline was approved before Toro Energy, citing financial reasons, walked away from the project.

Since then, both the landfill and the OxyChem plant have closed.

And other local pipelines remain active.

A collection of pipelines and two compressor stations, the natural gas equivalent of a pump station, are located in West Vincent and Upper Uwchlan.

One, on Fellowship Road in West Vincent, is owned by Columbia Gas, the same company whose pipeline exploded Dec. 11 in West Virginia.

While those who showed up in Warwick Wednesday were there primarily because of local concerns about a local pipeline, several of the speakers, including Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum, told them they are now part of a larger issue and their best chance of having an impact is to join forces with those already engaged in the fight.

One fight worth joining, she said, is her group’s effort to have the Delaware River Basin Commission assert its authority over new pipelines.

“They are the only agency that is empowered to look at the cumulative impact the drilling and these pipelines have on streams and drinking water supplies in the watershed,” van Rossum told the Warwick crowd.

Four weeks ago, the DRBC rejected that request, which came in the form of a petition, signed by, among others, 12 Pennsylvania legislators. She said the petition would be re-submitted and noted that Hennessey’s signature was not among the legislators who backed the request.

“Sign it Tim, Sign it Tim,” people in the crowd began chanting.

Van Rossum also warned that the Marcellus Shale formation, and the gas trapped within it, is a finite resource.

“Once they drain it dry, they will go after the other shale formations,” van Rossum said, pointing to, among others, the Raritan Shale formation which is deeper and located under New Jersey and Southeast Pennsylvania and has been identified by the U.S. Geologic Survey as also likely containing gas reserves.